Six Times Lily Tried to get James to Like Christmas
by McKinnon-and-Black-forever
Summary: And one time she sort of succeeded.


**_A/N: Hey guys! This was written for the jily challenge on tumblr. My prompt was 'you're kind of a scrooge and it's up to me to show the true meaning of holiday spirit hallmark movie style AU'._**

 _I_

Lily Evans loved Christmas. It was, after all, the most wonderful time of the year. Anyone who said otherwise was wrong. (At least, in her mind.) But this Christmas was even more special than all the other Christmas's before it. This year was her first Christmas at Hogwarts with her new friends. Lily was beyond excited, but also a little disappointed that she wouldn't be spending it with her family.

This year a good majority of the first years Gryffindors were not going home. Remus said that his mother was staying with her parents because her mum was sick, and it would just be him and his dad so he decided to stay here. Peter's mother was going to visit their cousins in France, and he wasn't going on the count that he hated his cousins. Mary didn't want to spend Christmas with her dad so she opted to stay here. Marlene's dad was working through the holidays and Lily wasn't quite sure where her mother was, but regardless, she was staying. Sirius was staying due to some reason unknown to Lily, and he had convinced James to stay.

"What do you think of this?" Marlene asked, holding up a sweater that looked like a Christmas sweater.

"Marlene," Lily whined. "I can't tell you what I think. I'm going to be a judge."

Marlene pouted and pulled the shirt on regardless. Since they were all going to be here, Lily had decided that they should have an ugly Christmas sweater contest. It took a little convincing on the boys' part, but she had managed to get it under way. Lily had appointed herself and Remus as judges.

Happily, she made her way down the stairs with Marlene in tow. (Mary was already down there.) When they reached the common room, Lily saw something that appalled her. James Potter was not wearing a Christmas sweater. In fact, he was not wearing a sweater at all. His shirt was a deep green color. Annoyed, Lily marched over to him and promptly delivered a smack to his arm.

"Ow!" he exclaimed. "What was that for, Evans?"

"Where's your sweater?" she demanded to know. Then a thought occured to her. "Are you Jewish? I'm so sorry I didn't think of that."

James gave her a look. "I'm not Jewish, Evans. I just don't like Christmas."

Lily's mouth fell open. "What? How can you not like Christmas?!"

He shrugged. "Don't know. Have fun with your competition."

"But you said you were going to do it with us!" she exclaimed.

"No, you talked and I pretended to listen," he told her. "Besides, all of this is stupid anyway."

"How dare you!" Lily shouted, giving James another smack. With that, Lily turned and marched toward the fire place. For the rest of the night, her annoyance with James Potter and his dislike of Christmas ran through her veins.

 _II_

"James!" twelve-year-old Lily Evans sang as she heads up to the boys' dormitory. This year she was going to get James Potter to like Christmas. What better way to do that than to go caroling in Hogsmeade? Sure, they weren't allowed to go to Hogsmeade until next year, but Sirius said he knew a way to get them into the village without anyone getting in trouble.

A part of Lily wondered why their little group always stayed at Hogwarts instead of going home. She never asked though. She had her own reasons and she never cared to pry into anyone else's business.

"What?" he answered from his bed. The lanky boy was stretched out across said bed reading a Transfiguration book that they were supposed to get next year.

"What are you doing?" she asked, plopping down next to him.

James looked at her like she was crazy. "Reading?"

"Right, well, put that away," Lily said, snatching the book out of his hands.

"Hey!"

"We're going caroling."

"Ok, have fun."

"And you're going with us."

"The hell I am."

"James, please!" she begged. "It'll be fun. I know you'll like it if you just try it."

"I don't want to," he replied. "Can I gave my book back now?"

"No!" she snapped. "You're coming with us whether you like it or not."

James growled under his breath. "If I go, will you leave me alone for the rest of the night?"

"Yep!"

"Fine."

Lily waited as James pulled on his coat and slipped into his boots. Finally, he was ready to go. Happily, Lily skipped down the stairs with James in tow. Sirius and the others have already gone down to Hogsmeade so James had to guide them through the school, which seems a lot scarier at night, and through the secret tunnel, which Lily had no idea existed. Finally, they reach the others.

"You got him to come!" Mary exclaimed.

"Told you I could," Lily said smugly.

"Can we get this over with?" James muttered.

So the night didn't turn out exactly as Lily planned. Two people ended up running them off and James fell into a mud puddle and nearly froze as they made their way back to the castle. Not to mention, they all got dentition for a week because McGonagall caught them out of bed.

So, much to Lily's utter annoyance, James still didn't like Christmas.

 _III_

This Christmas Lily had planned something that she knew James wouldn't get hurt doing. She had convinced Sirius to go down to the kitchens and get the House Elves to make plain cookies for them and give them things to decorate them with. For some reason unknown to Lily, this had been very easy for Sirius to do. Now the table in the common room was filled with different supplies that one would need for decorating Christmas cookies.

It had become tradition for the third year Gryffindors to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas.

However, even these delicious treats couldn't get James up off the couch.

"Jamesie poo," Lily called as she skipped over to him.

"Don't call me that," he told her, not looking up from his Quidditch magazine.

"Don't you want to come and decorate cookies with us?" she asked.

"Nope," he said, flipping a page in his magazine. "I'll help you eat them though."

"Rude," Lily muttered. "Come on, just try it. I swear it'll put you in the Christmas spirit."

"I don't like Christmas, Evans," James sighed. "We've been over this."

"Well, this will make you like. Please."

"Fine."

Lily skipped back over to her spot as James clambered off the couch and over to where she stood. After handing him a cookie and a piping bag filled with icing, she went back to her own cookie. Looking back, Lily should have known better than to give James Potter of all people a piping bag.

As she turned to tell James something, she was hit directly in the face with icing. Slowly, she opened her eyes to see James smirking at her.

"Oh, that's it," she muttered before grabbing her piping bag and squirting a blob of icing onto James' shirt. This earned her a glare from James before he was squirting more icing at her. After that, it was a full on war. Lily and the girls were against the boys. Icing covered almost every inch of the common room. Granted, the decorating wasn't going exactly to plan, but this had to make James like Christmas.

Somehow or another, Lily managed to get icing under James' glasses and into his eye. Of course, Lily didn't know that when she asked James to decorate cookies, it would end up with James howling in pain and having to be taken to the Hospital Wing, even though Lily was positive he would have been fine without the help of Madam Pomfrey.

Needless to say, James did not change his mind about Christmas and he refused to do anything with Lily for the rest of the holiday.

 _IV_

"No, Evans," James said before she even opened her mouth.

"You don't even know what I was going to ask," she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.

"It has something to do with this blasted holiday so I refuse to take part in it," he stated as he dug through his trunk.

"Well, if you refuse to take part, then why do you give everyone gifts?" Lily demanded to know.

"Because it would be rude not to," James responded. "After all, they went through the trouble of finding me a gift so I'm going to get them something in return."

Lily glared. "You're boring. Hanging lights is fun."

"It's also a good way to get strangled," he retorted. "I'm going flying. Have fun with your lights."

With that comment, James left Lily all alone in his room, which was rather stupid. Already, a plan had started to form in Lily's mind.

Quickly, she ran back downstairs and grabbed a bunch of lights before hightailing it back to James' room. Then she started to work.

It took her a good thirty minutes to get the lights untangled, but once she did that, it was easy to string them around the room. Since James liked Gryffindor so much, she decided to charm the lights to be only red and gold. The room looked rather pretty when she was done. Thankfully, about five minutes after she had finished, James decided to return to his dorm.

"Surprise!" she shouted, throwing her hands up.

"Evans, what did you do?" James muttered as he stared at the room.

"See? Doesn't this make you like Christmas? All the lights are so pretty!"

"No, it doesn't. And Gryffindor colors aren't meant to be on lights. Take them down."

"Take them down?! Do you know how long it took me to put them up?!"

"I don't care. Take them down. I'll be back in thirty minutes. Please, have them gone by then."

"Thirty minutes?! That can't be done!"

"You have a wand for a reason, Evans."

Grumbling under her breath, Lily pulled out her wand and started to take down the lights.

 _V_

"James!" Lily shouted, her pillow in hand.

"What?!" James called back from his bed.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked.

"Why would I want to sleep on the floor of the common room when I can sleep on my bed?"

Lily sighed. She had been trying to for the past three days to get James to sleep on with everyone else under the tree, but so far, she couldn't seem to convince him.

"Please!" she begged. "For me?"

"I'm going to get hurt, aren't I?" he mumbled as he pushed himself off of his bed.

"Oh, thank you!" Lily exclaimed as she hugged him. "I promise you'll like Christmas tomorrow when you wake up next to the tree and see all your friends around you. You'll have fun opening your presents first thing, too!"

"I'm sure."

So Lily dragged James down the stairs to the spot that Mary and Marlene had cleared for them. That was the great thing about being the only ones here at Christmas time: they had the common room all to themselves. And Lily was right, nothing bad happened during the night. It happened the next morning.

Lily woke up with James next to her, which caused her to smile. She sat up and stretched. As she glanced down at James, she couldn't help but snicker at his position. His limbs were _everywhere_. Rolling her eyes, Lily stood up and went over to the fire place. After a few minutes, she heard someone stir. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that it was James. She also saw something that alarmed her. A good chunk of James' sweater had somehow managed to lodge itself into one of the trees' branches and James was attempting to pull it out, instead of reaching over and unhooking it like a normal person. Lily was about to call out and tell him to stop, but it was too late. The tree had already started to rock back and forth. The star that rested atop it fell down and right onto a very sensitive part of James' body. But at least it wasn't the pointy end of the star.

Lily rushed over to him. "Are you ok?"

"This is why I don't like Christmas," he gasped as she untangled his shirt.

 _VI_

This was perfect. Lily's plan was fool proof this year. There was no way that this couldn't make James like Christmas. Gently, she knocked on her boyfriend's dorm door before slipping inside. James was pulling his shirt on, but he grinned when he saw her.

"Hey you," he greeted her.

"Hey," she replied, slipping her arms around his waist. "I know you don't like Christmas-"

James groaned. "Not again, Lily."

"-but I think you'll like this," she continued. "Just try it please." She pushed the piece of paper she had been holding since she was downstairs into James' front pocket. "It's called Secret Santa. All you have to do is buy a gift for the name written on that paper. But you don't tell that person that you bought them their gift. We exchange them on Christmas Eve and find out who gave who what."

"And how did you decide who would buy what for who?" he asked.

"We put names in a hat," she told him.

"I'm assuming my name was put into that hat as well."

"It was."

"Fine. I'll give it a go."

Lily smiled and kissed his cheek before departing from the boys' dorm and heading off to Hogsmeade to find herself a present for Remus.

The next week passed quietly with everyone trying to find their gifts. Lily found the perfect book that she knew Remus would love. She couldn't wait to give it to him. Finally, the night arrived when they would give each other their presents. The sixth year Gryffindors sat in a circle in the middle of the common room.

"I think James should go first," Sirius stated, grinning.

Lily watched him from a moment, before finding James' present. James looked at Sirius and back down at the gift before he started to unwrap it. Once he'd lifted the lid off, he was sprayed with some kind of liquid. Jumping to his feet, he yelled as he wiped at his face. After a few minutes, nothing happened.

"What was that for, Padfoot?" James demanded to know.

Sirius laughed. "To get you in the Christmas spirit."

Lily glanced back at James and watched in horror as his face and the top of his hair turned green and red.

And so, while James thought Sirius' prank was genius, he continued to dislike Christmas.

 _VII_

Lily had pretty much given in. James didn't like Christmas, and she supposed that she could live with that. After all, he was a good boyfriend and never forgot their anniversary or her birthday. She could live with him not liking Christmas.

This year, the Gryffindor gang was spending Christmas at the Potters' house. Apparently, Mrs. Potter had insisted that James and Sirius come home for Christmas this year. James had proceeded to invite all of his friends, assuring them that his parents wouldn't mind. He was right. They didn't.

So Lily found herself decorating the Potters' Christmas tree with the most expensive ornaments on the face of the earth.

"What are you doing?" James asked as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

Lily smiled. "I'm decorating."

"Can I help?"

Spinning around, Lily looked at him in disbelief. Was she dreaming?

"You want to help decorate the Christmas tree?" she questioned.

James shrugged. "Why not? I get to do it with you."

He reached down, grabbed an ornament from the box, and hung it on the tree.

"I thought you didn't like Christmas," she said.

"It's alright. I guess all those years of you trying to get me to like it rubbed off a little."

Lily kissed James' cheek. "Good."

And that is the story of how James Potter came to tolerate Christmas.


End file.
